Tess Brunton

Debris from the Lake Ōhau fire will need to travel at least two hours away if it is disposed of in Canterbury.

Incoming Tourism Minister Stuart Nash has a huge opportunity to do something 'very special' with the sector, Tourism Industry Aotearoa says.

Lake Ōhau residents say they may have been unnecessarily delayed from moving back into the village due to issues with demolition.

Some Lake Ōhau residents will be able to move back into their undamaged properties just over a month after the devastating fire.

The censuring of a Dunedin councillor for threatening behaviour has been described as a slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket.

The estimated construction cost for a new hut along the Milford Track in Fiordland has nearly doubled to more than $3 million since work started on the initial design.

New documents show Southland businesses have serious concerns about the Invercargill City Council being fit to govern.

Like winning the lotto - that's how a Lake Ōhau couple have described discovering their pets alive and well days after they were separated by fire.

The firefighters who raced to the community's rescue have opened up about how the Lake Ōhau fire took hold.

Work will get under way soon on an access road to a popular Fiordland track after it was partly wiped out by floodwaters.

Southern businesses are calling for more certainty ahead of an election finance debate in Queenstown tonight.

A South Island tourism operator says he could have prevented redundancies if wasn't for delays to a nature-based job creation scheme.

Tourism operators want a review of a controversial government fund that new papers show was nearly scrapped before it got off the ground. Video

A 'haunted' Otago hotel has closed for the first time since it was built in 1882 after a business deal went awry.

Invercargill city councillors have spent most of an extraordinary meeting behind closed doors talking about how they plan to restore the public's trust and confidence.

Invercargill City councillors have had a mixed reaction to being subject to a government review with some welcoming the scrutiny and others questioning why it is needed.

South Island ski fields are feeling the loss of Auckland visitors in the wake of the level 3 restrictions.

Queenstown Lakes residents have slammed Aurora Energy plans to hike power prices, calling the power company untrustworthy, unreliable and even incompetent.

The impacts of returning to level 2 will be a "kick in the guts" for South Island businesses which were just getting back on their feet.

Each winter, a small team of specialist avalanche forecasters begin their vigil to keep people safe while travelling on the Milford Road. Video

Close to one million people visited Milford Sound last year, but that's slowed from a torrent to a trickle as borders have closed. Video

Southern DHB is pushing for Dunedin and Invercargill to be used for managed isolation ahead of Queenstown, due to concerns about its lack of medical facilities.

Plans for isolating people in Queenstown will need to be bulletproof before the mayor will back them, he says. Audio

Few supporters could be found in David Clark's electorate of Dunedin today - a seat he won by more than 11,000 votes in the last election.

The tourism industry remains in the dark about where millions of dollars collected through the international visitor levy will go.